Engaging in a video game experience that is new to the user can be frustrating due to a lack of understanding of how the game operates and how to navigate therein. When a user decides to play a video game, the user is most often looking for a fun and enjoyable experience. If the user is faced with a video game software application that is difficult to learn and use, the user will not likely return to that game the next time he or she wishes to play.
Most video game software programs, like nearly all software programs, include a “help” feature. With traditional help features, the user must go to a menu and choose from a series of so-called drop down box choices (wherein each drop down box consists of a preset list of choices presented to the user) until he or she finally reaches the topic area in which the question lies, if the topic area is included in the help function at all. Further, this type of help must be initiated by the user, and the user must be able to recognize the appropriate terminology to find the desired help topic.
Context-sensitive help was later created to help users at the time they required the help during use of the software. This type of help function is form based and not task based. This means that the user must access the desired part of the software application via a menu and then choose a portion of the form they need help with. This help function therefore also presupposes user knowledge of the appropriate terminology.
When interne video gaming became popular, many games presented learning scenarios in which the user could play in a protected environment to learn how the game operated, and could then play the real game using what they had learned in the protected environment. With this kind of help function, the protected environment is separate from the real game environment, so that a user embedded in a real game may not have access to a help feature. Online gaming further introduced a chat feature so that users could receive live help from other users when they needed it. While this type of help feature is effective, it is also too resource intensive to be used for many software applications, such as those utilized in a corporate environment.
All of the above takes on even greater importance when taken in the context of the use of video games to educate or train people. Such training practices are gaining traction as schools and businesses begin to appreciate the power of using a video game environment to engage learners and train them to work their way through a decision-filled process. However, users undergoing training are even more in need of effective help functions than those who play for pleasure, as the users undergoing training are probably novices at using the video game, and their training time may be either paid work time or may be part of an educational requirement. Thus, it is imperative that such users be able to navigate through a video game software program efficiently on their own.